Michael Swan

Forgiveness can change the world as we know it

September 15, 2012

TORONTO - Nobody disputes that forgiveness is the right thing to do, or that it might sometimes be difficult. Immaculée Ilibagiza has much more than that to say about forgiveness. The Rwandan genocide survivor and best-selling author believes forgiveness can be the basis of our society — the foundation for a different kind of politics, a better sort of media, a more purposeful economy, higher ideals in education, stronger families and a new world order. “It’s about understanding that forgiveness is peace. Peace starts in the heart. It starts in the family. It comes to the country,” Ilibagiza told The Catholic Register. Ilibagiza will be at the Marylake Our Lady of Grace Shrine in King City, Ont., Sept. 28-29 to tell her story and nudge the audience into a deeper understanding of forgiveness. Ilibagiza’s story of survival in the midst of the 1994 Rwandan genocide is as raw and inspiring as any. She and seven other women spent 91 days in silence hiding in a bathroom at the church rectory. She began those 91 days as a 52-kliogram (115-pound) 24-year-old surrounded by family everywhere she went. She emerged just 30 kilograms (65 pounds) as one of the last surviving Ilibagizas. Only one brother, who happened to be abroad during the orchestrated massacre of 900,000 Rwandan Tutsi and Hutus judged too friendly with Tutsi, survived. In the cramped bathroom, Ilibagiza had a Bible, a dictionary and a rosary her father had given her. With the Bible and the dictionary she learned English. With the rosary she deepened her relationship with Mary. Outside the church yard she confronted a man armed with a machete — the same man who killed her mother and a brother. She said to him, “I forgive you.” In the aftermath of the genocide, Ilibagiza worked for the United Nations and eventually moved to New York to work at United Nations headquarters. She would quietly tell her story to co-workers and friends, but it wasn’t the sort of story that could stay quiet. Eventually she wrote Left To Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust. No ordinary venture into religious publishing, Left To Tell became a New York Times best seller, has been translated into 15 languages and has been added to the curriculum for thousands of high school and university students around the globe. By now, Ilibagiza has told her story hundreds of times. DVDs of her retreat talks sell online and she’s signed a contract with MPower Pictures to transform her story into a feature film. But the 42-year-old mother of two continues to be surprised by the effect her story has on audiences. “I’m really more amazed by what people take from my story,” she said. “What people take is that forgiveness, in such a magnificent way, is in their hearts.” Ilibagiza has been confronted with many audience members who, either at the end of her talk or weeks later, discover a capacity to forgive husbands, wives, parents, children, brothers and sisters. But Ilibagiza also emphasizes how personal and intimate acts of forgiveness within families and among friends can begin a process that reaches beyond that immediate circle. The touchstone of Ilibagiza’s talks is the spirituality of the rosary. She has written a book about the apparition of Our Lady of Kibeho, a recognized Marian apparition from the early 1980s in a small town in Rwanda. The apparition included a vision of men with machetes and a warning about the dire consequences of turning away from God. The economic and social implications of reconciliation and forgiveness are on display to the world in Rwanda today, Ilibagiza said. The number of universities and university enrollment have skyrocketed since the genocide. The economy is growing at eight per cent yearly and Africa’s most densely populated and deeply divided nation is discovering a new sense of citizenship that transcends ethnic identity, she said. “People are building now more than ever, because they learned a lesson,” said Ilibagiza. “My reason to forgive is that I finally came to understand that people can change, people can learn, people are smart.” Ilibagiza has taken her gospel of forgiveness to the Vatican and an audience with Pope Benectict XVI. She met with the Pope at the end of his Angelus address Sept. 4. She found the experience overwhelming. Tickets to Ilibagiza’s talk at Marylake are $50 for general admission or $100 for reserved seating, a reception with her and a signed copy of Left To Tell. Call (905) 833-5368 or visit www.luvn4gve.ca.

Bringing safety to troubled marriages

September 14, 2012

BRAMPTON, ONT. - Catholic social workers in Brampton and Mississauga have found a new way to stand up for marriage by standing with as many allies as they can find. Catholic Family Services Peel-Dufferin, a Catholic social work agency at the service of all families in the suburbs west of Toronto, is the lead agency for the Safe Centre of Peel, a family justice centre in the William G. Davis Centre for Families in Brampton. “As Catholics, we can’t be afraid to lead,” said Mark Creedon, executive director of Peel-Dufferin Catholic Family Services. Creedon has pulled together eight critical agencies that serve women and families faced with violence. Rather than being referred from one location to another to obtain housing, counselling, legal aid, medical advice, child care and more, at the Safe Centre it all happens in the same place. The idea is to deliver more effective and timely help and prevent women from giving up hope and returning to life with their abuser. “Our purpose (at Catholic Family Services) is to preserve true marriages,” said Creedon. “If somebody goes into a marriage thinking his wife is his punching bag, well that’s not really a marriage.” The Brampton Safe Centre isn’t the first Canadian family justice centre led by a Catholic agency. The former Catholic family services agency in Kitchener-Waterloo, now known as Mosaic, took the lead in establishing the Family Violence Project of Waterloo Region in 2006. The idea of pooling and co-ordinating services to battered women in a single location started in San Diego, Calif., in 2002. Former City Attorney Casey Gwinn brought together police and social work agencies to form a united child abuse and domestic violence unit. To date, Gwinn’s National Family Justice Alliance has fostered and encouraged 80 family justice centres in the United States and 30 internationally from Amman, Jordan, to Sonora, Mexico. “The fundamental issues are the same whether you’re in Canada, Mexico, Europe or anywhere else in the world,” Gwinn told The Catholic Register. In the case of Canadian centres, having religious agencies lead the conglomerate of services is an advantage, he said. “That spiritual care piece does make the Canadian model more vibrant. We struggle in the United States to get the spiritual care piece addressed in family justice centres,” he said. Though it’s a Catholic agency that acts as landlord and instigator at the Safe Centre of Peel, the centre is able to connect clients with spiritual care for people of all faiths. The other agencies may not be Catholic, but they share values and a common purpose with Catholic Family Services, said Creedon. “We’re dealing with excellent partner agencies that have great values which we share,” he said. While Creedon has been able to get most of the critical services to buy in, he has struggled to get Peel Regional Police onside. The police are part of the Safe Centre’s steering committee and have worked out a protocol for getting victims from the Safe Centre to the police station. But they refuse to station officers already dedicated to domestic violence cases at the centre. Peel Police claim their “best practice business model” involves working with the Safe Centre of Peel, but “does not involve the permanent stationing of officers within the facility,” Staff Sergeant Rob Higgs told The Catholic Register in an e-mail. “It’s very shortsighted for law enforcement to say, ‘Oh, this isn’t really our thing,’ ” said Gwinn. “Law enforcement officers around the world are realizing they can’t do the job alone. They’re never going to arrest their way out of the problem.” Peel Police responded to 2,042 criminal intimate relationship incidents in 2011 and another 6,554 verbal domestic occurrences. Overall, domestic calls in Peel have increased 13.99 per cent between 2008 and 2011, according to Higgs. The more police come to the house and do no more than record the incident or negotiate temporary quiet, the more abusive men feel the law won’t touch them, said Gwinn. “Empowered batterers are more likely to fight with police officers. Empowered batterers are more likely to kill police officers,” said Gwinn. The repeat visits also cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in police resources that don’t produce convictions, said Gwinn. Creedon would like to persuade police to station officers at the Safe Centre, but for now hopes working effectively with police will convince the next chief to assign officers to the centre. Getting this right is about much more than saving the police budget or getting more convictions. For Creedon, it’s about changing the direction for the next generation. “One of the things we know about domestic violence is how much it is a generational thing,” he said. “So if you grow up in a family where your mother is getting abused — or it could be the father, but somebody is getting abused in that family — you are three times more likely to grow up to be an abuser or to be abused.” Nationally the scale of the problem is immense. In 2007 there were more than 40,000 incidents of spousal violence reported to police, about 12 per cent of all police-reported violent crime in Canada, according to Statistics Canada. Women were the victims 83 per cent of the time. “I totally believe there is something about being a Catholic family service agency that following the Catholic social justice values forces us to not walk away when we see tremendous injustice,” said Creedon.

Prisoners' Wives looks to spark conversation on prison families

September 13, 2012

It may be the world of make believe, but the British drama series Prisoners’ Wives is all about a harsh, complex reality. The producers of the BBC show and people who work with prisoners and their families hope the series sparks a conversation about the social cost of incarceration. “When a man or a woman goes to jail the whole family does the time. It changes everything in the family dynamic,” Deacon Mike Walsh of the Friends of Dismas told The Catholic Register. The Friends of Dismas, an ecumenical ministry for ex-prisoners in Toronto, is launching a new support team dedicated to working with families of those on the inside. That makes Prisoners’ Wives “very timely,” Walsh said. Prisoners’ Wives has been picked up in Canada by Vision TV and airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. It tackles the stories of four women with loved ones who are imprisoned — Lou, who has tried to escape poverty by selling drugs; Francesca, who has risen to fabulous wealth on the criminal entrepreneurship of her husband and now loses it all; middle-class, middle-aged Harriet, who finds herself bewildered and isolated when her son goes to jail; and pregnant Gemma, who gradually learns her husband is not who she thought he was. The women find themselves on a journey of discovery about themselves and their relationships while the men inside struggle to keep up. Both the prisoners and their wives have to answer basic questions. The family dynamic of prison life hasn’t often made it to either the big or the little screen. While there are plenty of cop shows and prison dramas about the lives of criminals and workings of the criminal justice system, there are no great films about wives, children and parents left behind. “In popular entertainment, TV drama, have people thought about the plight of prisoners’ wives before? No. Uh-uh,” said executive producer Rebecca de Souza. “It’s delightful, because we could be the first one’s to do it. “There are a lot of spiritual journeys prisoners have to go through. (Harriet’s son) Gavin goes on a pretty misguided spiritual journey. He thinks it’s a spiritual journey but it really isn’t.” But the writers, directors and actors had no easy, well established film clichés to fall back on. Instead they had to do hundreds of hours of research talking to prison families, chaplains, guards, social workers and prisoners. “It was a fantastic opportunity for POPS (the British charity Partners of Prisoners) and other organizations to engage with and influence the public dialogue as well as making the public aware of the support services we offer,” said POPS policy and research officer Rebecca Cheung. “(The show) raised a number of key issues such as the bullying of children of prisoners and the diversity of individuals affected by imprisonment.” The show has been successful enough in the UK to be picked up for a second season and POPS has noticed much more conversation in British media and on social media about prison issues from the point of view of families. “Families of prisoners are generally speaking invisible,” said Cheung. “Prison life in the UK conversely receives quite a lot of attention.” Public dialogue is obsessed with punishment but ignores social costs, said de Souza. “Is he being punished enough? Is he being rehabilitated enough? Should they be allowed televisions in their cells? We’re all very interested in those subjects,” she said. “What people don’t talk about is the massive community around him that is equally affected.” Walsh for one hopes the drama might prick up a few ears to the real spiritual needs of real prison families. “(Imprisonment) has a ripple effect we often never think about, and it is a time when the parish community needs to come together in support,” Walsh said.

Pope Benedict's visit can bring new hope to Middle East

September 9, 2012

As war bears down from all sides, Lebanese Christians are waiting for their own Arab Spring. For the Middle East’s most Christian country, spring arrives with Pope Benedict’s visit to Beirut Sept. 14-16. “The Pope’s visit comes as an important message of peace, not only for the Christians but also for the Muslims of the region,” Issam Bishara, Catholic Near East Welfare Association regional director, told The Catholic Register in an e-mail from Beirut. With much larger Syria fully engulfed in civil and sectarian war to the north, east and south, fighting has already slipped across the border into Lebanon. “Lebanon cannot but be affected by what is going on in Syria,” Bishara said. Despite the raging war in Syria, Lebanese and Vatican officials expect the papal visit to proceed on schedule. “I know that the visit is very well prepared and the security is under the control of the presidential guard,” said Bishara. In Beirut on Sept. 15, Pope Benedict XVI will deliver an exhortation based on the 2010 Synod on the Middle East in Rome. The synod gathered bishops and patriarchs of the region with selected bishops from around the world to discuss the future of Christianity in the land of its birth. With a diminishing Christian population, deep divisions along religious lines and the increasing dominance of politicized forms of Islam, the bishops called for an enlarged secularism with room for all religious voices and institutions to contribute to society. Such a transformation has to begin with ideals of citizenship which transcend local allegiances of tribe, clan and family, said the bishops. Keeping Lebanon at peace is critical for the future of the whole region, said Fr. Youssef Chedid, associate pastor at Toronto’s Our Lady of Lebanon parish. “Lebanon is a key country in the (Middle) East in which everything that happens in Lebanon will have implications for the whole area, and vice versa,” he said. Chedid was an expert advisor at the 2010 Synod on the Middle East. He views the Pope’s Sept. 15 exhortation as an opportunity to re-orient the Arab Spring. “It’s more an autumn than a spring (so far),” said Chedid. “It hasn’t brought good news. It hasn’t brought events of social progress. It didn’t get better after all these revolutions.” Pope Benedict XVI’s exhortation is an opportunity to change the channel on entrenched regional conflicts, said Chedid. “We would hope that this exhortation will bring to the whole Middle East a new hope,” he said. A form of secularism that respects and values the contributions of all religions, where majorities and minorities can speak as equals, is the best hope for Middle Eastern Christians, said Chedid. “We don’t want to be considered second rate. We don’t want to live in a totalitarian regime. We want democracy that will care for all the social groups,” he said. Chedid grew up in Lebanon under the rule of the militias. He worries that importing a war from Syria repeats the same mistake of Lebanon in the 1980s. “It’s the war of outside parties with everyone supporting outside parties,” he said. “They’re doing their fight on our land.” Countering the tendency for regional wars to seep into Lebanon, the Pope has the opportunity to export a vision of peace from Lebanon to the region, according to Chedid. “Our hope after the visit of the Pope to Lebanon is that through Lebanon he will speak to all the Arab countries and he will help us to understand each other — to help us to have a good dialogue, not between the strong party and the weak party but between all of us as believers. We will have a dialogue that will care about everything on the social level and also the political level.” This message matters when gun battles break out between Sunni and Alawite militants across Syria Street in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city, said Bishara. The Alawites are loyal to the Assad family and its regime in Damascus. As in Syria, the Sunnis line up with rebel forces. It isn’t just Lebanon’s Muslims who are picking sides in Syria’s war. “Christians in Lebanon have already chosen sides. One group supports General (Michel) Aoun (founder of the Free Lebanon Party) whose allies are the Shiite Hezbollah and Speaker of the House Nabih Berri,” said Bishara. “Another Christian group is loyal to the chief of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea, supported by the Sunnite political leaders headed by the previous Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri.” Aoun’s group is part of the March 8 Movement allied with Syria. Hariri is leader of the March 14 Alliance which opposes Syrian interference in Lebanon. “The Church leadership in Lebanon, especially Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, has been trying to unify this schism for years — but with very little success,” said Bishara. So far, all parties want to avoid the kind of militia-led politics that made Lebanon a failed state in the 1980s. “Going back to the years of war when militias were in charge of Lebanon is very unlikely,” said Bishara. “The leadership of the different political groups have all experienced the devastation resulting from total loss of order by government and also know well that in the end they will all lose.” Al-Rahi condemned the “so-called military councils of clans and sects” as fighting broke out in Tripoli. Al-Rahi is calling on Lebanon’s central government to exercise full control and maintain its independence.

Changing of the guard, not the mandate, at Catholic Insight

September 9, 2012

TORONTO - Going into its 21st year as Canada’s right-leaning, conservative journal of ideas, Catholic Insight is writing a new chapter in its history. But the man writing that chapter promises it will be just like the first chapter. Biologist, academic and pro-life crusader David Beresford has taken over from Fr. Alphonse de Valk as editor of the Toronto-based monthly magazine. The founding editor, de Valk, 80, retired last month. On the job since Aug. 15, Beresford landed the position by promising to do the conservative thing and keep everything the same. “I happen to be a big fan of Catholic Insight and said I didn’t think it needed to be changed,” Beresford told The Catholic Register. Beresford will seek to modernize software and internal processes, but the final product will continue to look not much different from the first issue back in January of 1993. With a subscription base of just under 3,000, the big challenge at Catholic Insight will be to grow circulation. Beresford’s experience in publishing includes a position as contributing editor to Gilbert Magazine, the publication of the American Chesterton Society. He also once published his own newsletter expounding distributism — a turn-of-the-20th-century Catholic response to Marxism that arose among English intellectuals. He has published articles in The Interim, a pro-life newspaper in Toronto, the National Catholic Register, a U.S. newspaper of the Eternal Word Television Network, and the Journal of the Canadian Chapter Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. The 50-year-old father of seven lives with his family on a farm in Dummer Township, Ont. and teaches science at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy, a non-accredited Catholic liberal arts school in Barry’s Bay, Ont. With a PhD in evolutionary biology, Beresford said his passion for Catholic ideas is rooted in his scientific training. The mission of Catholic Insight is to encourage Catholics to engage with the world, Beresford said. “Every generation of Catholics gets the opportunity to be apostolic,” he said. “The previous generation doesn’t hand us the job half-done or even finished. We get to start at ground zero again, to do it in the same way as the apostles.” Where many Catholics seem to be overwhelmed by negatives in media, Catholic Insight is trying to point out the positives, he said. “I want to encourage Catholics. The world is not as bad as the media portrays it. There’s a lot of really good, hardworking things happening in the Church,” Beresford said.

Collins urges Catholics to cross Palestinian-Israeli divide

September 6, 2012

TORONTO - The complexity, heartbreak and bitter politics of the endless Palestinian-Israeli conflict are no reason for Christians to either settle for easy answers or to throw up their hands in despair. The situation calls for Christian charity and solidarity, Cardinal Thomas Collins told a packed theatre in Toronto Sept. 5. Collins was on hand for the Toronto premiere of the Salt + Light TV documentary Across the Divide. The full-length documentary takes a close look at Bethlehem University — the only Catholic post-secondary institution in the Holy Land — and the trials of fourth-year commerce student Berlanty Azzam. Azzam was caught up in a maze of Israeli military security procedures that saw her detained and prevented from returning to Bethlehem to finish her degree. Azzam's detention by Israeli forces while she was on her way to a job interview in Ramallah became an international incident in 2009. The case blew up while Salt + Light producer Kris Dmytrenko and a crew were on the Bethlehem University campus making a film about the Christian Brothers and their 39-year-old university just outside Jerusalem. If the Church has to pick a side, it chooses to stand with the poor and the refugees, said Collins in a panel discussion after the screening. Collins was a participating bishop in the Synod on the Middle East in 2010. "We have to help them," said Collins, who has spearheaded efforts by Canadian dioceses to sponsor Iraqi refugees displaced by the turmoil in their homeland. "We would prefer, of course, that they can flourish in their home." The whole point of Bethlehem University is that it is a means for Palestinians — Chistians and Muslims — to flourish where they are, said Robert Smith, the university's vice chancellor. The university's student body is about 70 per cent Muslim and 30 per cent Christian. "They (graduates) will be trained and professional and committed to build a nation as well as a Church," he said. Dmytrenko, co-director of Across the Divide, warned against the temptation to name good guys and bad guys in the conflict. "There's a lot of people suffering on both sides," he said. "It's not a case of who is suffering more." "People think that all Muslims are terrorists trying to get rid of all Christians. That's not true," said Catholic Near East Welfare Association Canada director Carl Hetu. As a Maronite Catholic from Lebanon, it was important to Mona Dagher to be at the documentary's premiere. "I would hope that people will at least know what is going on there," said Dagher. She praised the film for accurately depicting the lives of Palestinian Christians. Ajax high school teacher Deanna Wilson said she plans to show the movie to her Grade 12 World Religions class. "We have an obligation to open our lens to other religions and realities," she said. She hopes particularly that her comfortable, suburban teens are moved by Azzam's struggle to get an education. "There are a lot of details I wasn't aware of," said Danny Ferguson at the end of the evening. "It's important to understand the political environment." "This gets the word out. This gets out the truth and the fullness of the truth," said Smith. "Our purpose in making this documentary was not to convince. It was simply to tell a story," Salt + Light CEO Fr. Tom Rosica told the audience. Rosica said he's received calls from committed advocates for both sides in the conflict — Palestinians, Jews and their allies — all equally unhappy with the film. But rather than buying into the rhetoric of the conflict the film strives to accurately fill in the political, economic, social and religious reality Bethlehem University struggles with daily.

Brian Brown bridges three religions in new book launching

September 3, 2012

TORONTO - Faith is a difficult subject to bring up with our children, our own flesh and blood. How many of us would endure earnest talk of faith from friends? A combination of courage and psychopathology is necessary before most Christians can talk about faith with strangers. So, what chance does interfaith dialogue really have? Brian Brown is not so easily dissuaded. The United Church minister and prolific author is convinced all we need is the right starting point. “The most basic approach is to go to each others’ Scriptures,” he told The Catholic Register. “If we’re to understand what each other aspires to be, the place to begin is each others’ Scriptures.” That’s the premise behind Three Testaments: Torah, Gospel and Quran. Brown has assembled Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars to introduce modern, readable translations of the three texts. The scholars explain how the holy books of each community are used and understood within the faith they represent. In the 21st century the three Abrahamic faiths do not occupy separate patches of the globe, or even separate social spheres. The three major faiths of the West rub shoulders daily, and we have the wars to prove it. For Brown, getting past the dialogue of caricatures, suspicion, fear and resentment is a matter of life and death. “It’s an antidote to the burning of the Quran,” he said. It’s not just terror attacks in far off capitals, or sick minds blowing up cars and shooting up theatres, that has Brown concerned. Ordinary Christians, Muslims and Jews have all been touched by the toxic stew of interfaith ranting, slander and innuendo. “I had a person tell me they were a little afraid to go to the hospital in Niagara Falls because most of the doctors are Muslim. These are good, sensible Christian people who are influenced by those bomb makers and now need to hear from the Scripture authorities,” he said. “Eighty per cent of Christians — and I’m guessing 80 per cent of Muslims and Jews — are so negatively impacted by the bombers and bloggers that good, proper-thinking Christian people getting e-mails that are cockeyed develop strange notions about their Muslim neighbours or their Jewish neighbours.” David Bruce, a United Church minister for 25 years who is now the lay Catholic director of The Good Neighbours’ Club for homeless men in Toronto, introduces the Gospel in Three Testaments. With doctorates from California’s Fuller Theological Seminary and Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College, Bruce believes the Three Testaments approach works because it’s based on solid scholarship and aimed at ordinary, intelligent readers. “Anybody who picks up a National Geographic and enjoys the articles should be able to enjoy Three Testaments,” he said. It’s also successful because the book isn’t trying to cram three different religions into a single test tube of kind and fluffy thoughts. “There’s an increasingly large proportion of Western Christianity that says there really isn’t any difference in the world religions if you boil it all down,” said Bruce. “We’re not saying that. We’re saying that there are real differences but that doesn’t mean we can’t stand side by side and listen to one another.” The book is meant to be read by people of faith. It’s not an outsider’s sociological analysis of religion as a curious phenomenon among certain classes of people. “All of this is written by believers to believers of other faiths,” said Bruce. As such it’s the antidote to common distortions that hijack religion, said Brown. “Scriptures are abused and can be made to say things. This project is a joint project of Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars to run counter to that, to say, ‘Let the Scriptures speak for themselves.’ ” The book is as much a cause as it is literature. Brown wants it read in seminaries and on university campuses. The book launch will take place in seven cities, beginning at Ground Zero in New York. New York launch events include a Sept. 9 interfaith rally in St. Peter’s Church next door to Ground Zero. In Washington Sept. 10-12 during the thick of the presidential campaign the Three Testaments launch at the Canadian Embassy will feature ambassadors, religious leaders and Amir Hussain, editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion who wrote the foreword to Three Testaments. In Dallas-Fort Worth Sept. 12-13 the book will be presented to the George W. Bush Presidential Library. In Los Angeles Sept. 14-15 the launch brings together Christians, Jews and Muslims for Temple Beth Am’s Shabbat service. The Jesuit University of San Fransisco host the Abrahamic faiths for an event Sept. 16-18. Kazi Publications, the most important Muslim publisher in America, hosts the Chicago launch Sept. 19-20. Toronto gets its turn Sept. 23-30 at the Royal Ontario Museum. The book also has something to say to people who dismiss religious thinking or think religious people incapable of solving religious conflict, said Bruce. “There is a stereotype out there that anybody who is actually committed to one of the three great Western faiths has somehow parked at least a section of their brains — they’ve put it in neutral. That’s just not the case,” he said. “In fact, the best scholarship in all three religions is by those who actually practise the faith.... It’s important for the three Abrahamic religions to hear each other on their own terms. When you bring them so close together in a single volume, they don’t really have any choice.”

Unlocking miracles with Special Olympics

September 2, 2012

TORONTO - St. Brigid’s parish just north of Danforth Avenue in Toronto’s east end doesn’t just believe in miracles. They are witnessed there weekly. On Monday nights through the school year, St. Brigid’s invites the Special Olympics into the school gym, right next door to the church. Accompanied by Grade 8 student volunteers from St. Brigid’s Catholic School, an average of about a dozen Special Olympians and their parents play basketball, variations on tag and duck-duck-goose. It’s an hour-and-a-half of fun, but it’s serious fun. Intellectually disabled athletes as old as 12 and 13 have spoken their first words at Special Olympics, said coach and organizer Linda Ward. “It’s like something unlocked,” she said. “It’s very important for kids,” said Ariel Samuel-Charles’ mother Marina. “Ariel has Down’s Syndrome and it’s very important to keep her active.” The free program that allows 13-year-old Ariel to play and socialize comes as a welcome relief for Marina. “Most programs are very expensive,” she said. Horseback riding, basketball and weekly swimming lessons for Ariel eat up a big chunk of the family budget, but they’re still not enough, said Marina. Often the people who appreciate the miracles on the gym floor most are parents. “To see their kids laugh and having fun like everybody else, it’s like a vacation,” said Ward. “It’s all they want for their kids.” Lina Cornacchi has seen her son Luigi learn new words at the age of 41. The program improves his balance, his co-ordination and his mood. When asked why the parish should be involved in Special Olympics, Fr. Carlos Augustos Sierra Tobon just points to Luigi. On Sunday mornings after Mass, Luigi’s first question to Tobon is about Special Olympics. Every week he wants to be sure the program is on. “Luigi has learned new words and new games,” said Lina. “When he knows all the new people, he’s very happy.” The experience isn’t just new and exciting for the Special Olympians. Student volunteer Jack Kelly found the experience eye-opening. “I didn’t know what to expect. You learn patience, definitely,” said Kelly. “It’s a different experience. I’ve never been around kids like this before.” Without Special Olympics Geoffrey Fantaske’s life has a tendency to become much more narrow. “He’s all too happy to get on his little iPad 15 hours a day,” said Ward. Ward is really looking forward to this fall, when the St. Brigid’s Special Olympics program will go into its second year. Now she has a core of Special Olympians who have experienced the basics and may be ready to move on to more complex and competitive activities. “It will be immediate, that trust factor,” she said. Eventually the St. Brigid’s Special Olympians will have the opportunity to compete at regional, national and international Special Olympics.

Renaissance revealed at Art Gallery of Ontario this spring

September 2, 2012

TORONTO - Christian artists over the past couple of millennia have understood you can paint a picture about God but you can’t paint God. In Florence in the first half of the 14th century artists discovered a whole new way of talking about God — new techniques, new subject matter, new insights which taken together became the Italian Renaissance. This spring the Art Gallery of Ontario invites us into Florence in the decades before 1348 — the year the black plague wiped out 60 per cent of the population. “Revealing the Renaissance: Art in Early Florence” will bring together altar pieces and manuscripts directly from Florentine churches, the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the AGO. Co-produced by the AGO and the Getty, this major new exhibition runs March 16 to June 16, 2013. “The show is irreducibly about faith,” said AGO curator Sasha Suda. “The stories of the Christian faith are certainly being told in the works of art and that’s certainly important to many people. That will speak to them. That will be crucial to them in the experience of the show.” The Italian Renaissance, more than any other art movement, stocked the shelves of Christian imagination in the West with images of what angels, the Blessed Virgin, Jesus and the saints are supposed to look like. Our mental pictures of heaven, hell and purgatory were first painted in Florence. This art was a clear break from the static, two-dimensional, flat images of previous centuries. From the late 1200s to the mid-13th century there was a revolution taking place in Florentine workshops fueled by new money, culture wars, globalizing trade and easy credit. It was, said Suda, an age of anxiety and an age of possibility. “It’s a show about faith in art to communicate anxieties, fears, hopes and most of all desire,” she said. The mendicant orders, first Dominicans and then Franciscans, had been established more than a century earlier. By the beginning of the 14th century the orders were a force throughout Europe. In Florence they were each building a major basilica. The Dominicans were erecting Santa Maria Novella at one end of the city and the Franciscans had Santa Croce at the other. “They are kind of in this competition with each other, with each putting their particular mendicant ways of life forward,” said Getty Museum curator Christine Sciacca. The friars had something to say about the ultimate purposes of wealth and power which stood in opposition to the corrupt, self-aggrandizing wealthy families of the city — the families that Dante Alighieri was skewering in the Divine Comedy, written in Florence in the years leading to Dante’s death in 1321. The mendicants were employing every artist they could find to carry their message. Giotto di Bondone, Bernardo Daddi, Pacino di Bonaguida and an army of others produced manuscripts, panel paintings, architectural designs and more for the new churches and for confraternities of lay people who attached themselves to the orders. The new art expressed the civic pride of Florentines who, thanks to trade across the Mediterranean with the emerging Ottoman Empire, were enjoying new wealth from expanding banking and textile industries. While the Florentines were certainly proud of their city and not averse to flaunting their wealth, they had doubts. What was all this money doing to their souls? How was this new wealth leading them toward or away from ultimate salvation? “With the mendicant orders, a really rich spiritual culture lives alongside and thrives alongside this more secularized practice and usage of religious art,” said Suda. The Franciscans and Dominicans became closely associated with humanism, the literary and philosophical movement at the base of the Renaissance. “(Humanism) is reflected in the art of the time, where instead of the gothic cathedrals where man was lost in the infinity of God we have an architecture based on human proportions,” said Dominican art historian Fr. Marius Zerafa in an e-mail to The Catholic Register. “Instead of the symbolism of Byzantine art we have the representation of biblical events, lives of the saints and eventually portraits of men and women.” Franciscan and Dominican preachers urged people to enter the life of Christ by every means possible — from creche scenes assembled on hillsides to evocative preaching. They commissioned art with the same purpose. “You have people like Giotto... making the scenes much more believable, using three dimensions so you get sort of sucked into that scene, so you can imagine all the details happening right in that one scene,” said Sciacca. “It was a very visceral thing.” The literary precursor of Giotto’s paintings was the Meditationes de Vita Christi by Pseudo-Bonaventura, an anonymous Franciscan. “In the early 14th century people are way more interested in this idea that there could be a correlation between their own lives and Scripture,” said Suda. “That’s why you get the narrative painting taking off as well, because you could stand in front of these paintings and it becomes an experience of what was happening,” said Sciacca. Sciacca and Suda’s study of 14th-century Florence has mapped out a crucial link between manuscript illumination and larger panels painted for display in churches. Pacino di Bonaguida pioneered new techniques and materials that made their way into both miniature book illustrations and large paintings. From one age of anxiety to another, these 700-year-old works have power over 21st-century viewers, said Sciacca. “They’re just going to react to beauty, first of all,” she said. “But on top of that they’re going to know these stories by looking at these different scenes — just by looking.” These aren’t pictures just to be analysed by esthetic purists. They are part of the spiritual life of the Church. “A lot of these things are coming from churches where they still are in use. That’s going to be really interesting. They still live and breathe as religious objects.”

Flood calls forth aid

August 16, 2012

Half-a-million people stuck in evacuation centres while their Manila-area homes are underwater are getting a helping hand from Development and Peace. The development arm of Canadian Catholics is sending $100,000 to help its Filipino partners – Caritas Philippines, Urban Poor Associates and the Centre for Environmental Concern – deal with Manila-area flooding. A month of unrelenting rain has displaced close to three million Filipinos. Caritas estimates 1.1 million flood refugees are staying with family or friends, but another 500,000 are in schools, government buildings and community centres. Typhoon Saola began dumping heavy rain in the Philippines July 28. The typhoon was followed by seasonal monsoon rains. The government claims illegal settlements along creek beds have made the situation worse. The flood crisis has sparked another round of debate about relocating slum dwellers in Manila. But for Caritas-Philippines and its National Secretariat for Social Action, the question is what to do right now. As of Aug. 10 the Caritas emergency fund known as Alay Kapwa Fund stood at just 2.4 million pesos, or $56,000. "Aside from launching local appeal to the dioceses, NASSA Caritas-Philippines is also tapping international partners to join us in conducting the emergency response," said a NASSA Caritas-Philippines report. Toronto's sizable Filipino community is also coming together to help with a fundraiser Saturday, Aug. 17 at Our Lady of the Assumption, 2565 Bathurst St. 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The parish is using its patronal feast to collect non-perishable food, over-the-counter medicine and money. Contributions will go directly to Caritas Philippines.